


Missed Connections

by Czeriah



Series: Zelink Month 2018 [6]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Happy Ending, Kinda, Romance, Star-cross lovers, Trains, modern elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 04:52:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17298137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Czeriah/pseuds/Czeriah
Summary: Some loves transcend time, some are ever stronger than that.





	Missed Connections

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so I started writing this during the Zelink month last August, but we lost my aunt and life in general caught up with me.  
> I've been stranded home with the chicken pox for the last week and a half, so I finally had time so stop and finish this. 
> 
> Needless to say that it wasn't how I had imagined writing this particular piece, but it kinda got away from me, and I now think that it's probably my best one so far. I really like it...
> 
> It take place in a Hyrule after BOTW, with some weird spirits tracks elements, imagine just a BOTW Hyrule but where the technology had evolved again after the game, kinda modern time Hyrule. I might have a few headcanon going on in there, I hope I doesn't bother anybody.
> 
> I listened to this Youtube channel during the writing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHW1oY26kxQ) and I think it grasp a lots of the general atmosphere I tried to convey, so don't hesitate to give it an ear during your reading. 
> 
> As always, English is not my first language, so I apologize for any awful mistake I might have left, I've reread that a hundred time already and I can't see anything anymore...xD
> 
> Happy new year to everybody, and have a good read ! I hope to read in the comments your thoughts about this ^^

That year, as it happen sometime, autumn arrived on a crisp summer night. One hour the air was heavy with warmth and sweetness and the next was ice cold and filled with the bittersweet taste of the end of something.

Weather in Hyrule was often like that, mostly on the far sides of the kingdom. The plain around the castle always seemed to have her own micro climate of soft breeze, shy sun and eventual rain, meanwhile the outskirt could go from year long frigid air of the Snowpeak, to the desertic warmth of the Gerudo valley. 

But nothing ever felt like home to Link like the crisp and cold air of the Akkalan plains, so close in shape as the rest of the grand plateau but as if engulfed in a perpetual autumn late afternoon. 

As much as he loved his job as Hyrule Train Track employee, he enjoyed it most when he was assigned here, in the Akkalan station. Most of his coworker were assigned to a certain place in particular and stayed there, or enjoyed running the trains all over the country while always going back home at the end of the day. Link wasn’t like that. He was a floater. They were only a handful of employee like him, never assigned to a task in particular, always changing affectation.

He hated staying in one place for too long, but he had to admit that this station near the University was his favorite one. 

If you asked him, he would tell you it was because of the bright colors the tree leaves seemed to have all year long, from bright greens to dark reds. the low light of the sun on the long meadow, never high enough to make you feel like it was summer, but giving this eerie feeling of late autumn to the area all year long.  
He would tell you about the crisp air of the wind, sometime hot when it came down from the Eldin volcano, sometime full of salt when the sea would bring rain. 

However, he would probably never tell you about his main reason to like the place.

 

* * *

 

In the very north-east of the province, you could find an old scientific facility. It was said that this place had been crucial in the defeat of the calamity, but that was hundreds of years ago and mostly history lovers would talk to you about that. It was only an hour away from Tarrey town, the capital of the region.

The place had probably changed a lot since that time. It was said that the only remaining piece was the giant telescope on top of it.  
The building was now surrounded by houses and smaller labs as well as the biggest university of the land. 

The school was well loved by his students, as much for the history surrounding it that for the serenity that came with the area. It has a couple of coffee shop, the biggest library outside of Castle town and the kind of atmosphere you only see in movies, where everybody likes to study and all is good in the world. Like a Yuletide tale where the heroine find love at the end of the story.

Zelda kinda felt like she was the heroine of a bad movie like that, and if you asked her, she would tell you that she might have preferred not missing her last train home.  
But of course she had. Her last class of the semester had run late, the professor had gone on and on about the schism between the Sheikah and the Yiga, from all those centuries ago, and how it was believed that the royal family of that time hadn’t really made a good decision in making the Sheikah destroy all their technology. Zelda actually agreed with him, who knows how would be the scientific global knowledge if her ancestors hasn’t been so stupid. But as interesting that lecture had been, it had extended the lesson by a good thirty minutes and as a result made her missed the connection to the central tower which was the only way for her to go back home on time.  
She would have to wait for the 6.45 train on the next day and of course, had no way to go back to her small appartement in the campus since everything was closed for the Yule season.

She took in a long, meant to be calming, breath.

Part of her had always loved train station. Particularly this one.  
It wasn’t the huge ones you could find in big cities, engulfed in a shell of metal and glass. As claustrophobic in their metallic skull and ambient madness than liberating as the new travel prospect they announced.  
They always smelled like the end of something and the beginning of everything. The crowd and the noise, so overwhelming you just wanted to fall into the first train possible without knowing where it could take you, just hoping it would be an adventure.. 

The Akkala Faculty station was not like that. The station was situated just before Tarrey Town, which was the last of this line. It was composed of four docks, next to each other, and a small building to buy tickets and be safe from the weather.

It wasn’t in the middle of the city but slightly on the outskirt, just at the verge of the forest. If you squint along the east of the tracks, you could even see the ocean not so far away.  
It was always breezy, mostly in the evening, and most often misty in the morning. It has the kind of atmosphere you imagine when someone tells you a fairy tale filled with magic and weird places, the kind that gives you the chills and make you dream of sorceress and mighty heroes.  
The kind you see in these movies, where the two lost lovers meet and fall in love right next to the tracks before each leaving in a different trains.

Train station always made her think of sad love stories. Like the ones of the heroes of old, and the princesses also named Zelda. The ones where the princess send back her hero back in time to let him live his life, the one where he decide to leave all by himself, the ones where he died in her arms, and all she could do was to hope than in her next life they would finally be happy.

They're haven't been a hero for so many years, and even if the Royal Family kept the habit of calling their first born daughters Zelda, most of the links she met were the ones made on the Sheikahnet. Ganon, or the calamity, was just a memory, kept alive by Historian and old fear that it could always come back, but never really sure if it was a legend or reality.

She breathed out.

The sun was slowly going down, and there was no use staying outside now. No magic train would come and pick her up. She could only wait for the morrow. At least she had taken a couple of books with her.

 

* * *

 

Link loved reading strange stories on the Sheikahnet.  
Tales of liminal space, moments and places in time that did not really exist, but were there anyway. Feeling that anything could happen if you were attentive enough of your surrounding.

Like sometime in the morning, when from the corner of your eyes you could glimpse a fairy.  
Nobody ever believed him when he mentioned it as a kid, so he stop speaking about it, but it happened. A small light that would float on the verge of his consciousness when the light were low and the mist so thick you could cut it with a knife.  
He sometime dreamt about a moon about to fall, about great battles that happened here and somewhere else. Of big birds, one as red as the fire of Eldin, and another bluer than the sky above.  
He dreamt about fairies and princesses, sometime brunet, sometime as blond as the wheat he could see from the train windows.  
Sometime he dreamt he was dying, other time he dreamt that she was.

Most time he just dreamt of her. She was always the same even if she never bore the same face, and he was always himself even when he wasn’t.

He never talk to anyone about these dreams.

He loved the Akkala Faculty station most of all the places he knew. The weird feeling like he could meet anything, anybody from anywhere. Although at night, like right now, most of the time it was empty.

He hadn’t expected to see someone, let alone a girl, sitting on the bench inside the station, but here she was anyway.  
Long blond hair, falling on her laps, even as she put them back behind her long and fine hylian ears. She was reading a book and in the silence of the place he could hear a slow music being hummed. A lullaby of sort, one he had never heard before but was strangely familiar anyway. 

She was familiar in that way strangers sometimes were, as if he had met her in another life, and maybe he had. He dreamt of strange life so often that he wouldn’t be surprised, and after all, he might have seen her on another day, in a train.  
She was familiar because somehow, he knew who she was, he had seen her, who hadn't? She was the crown princess after all, he recognized her. Everybody knew she was studying here. But he knew her, not in a gossipy way, just a true as saying he knew the grass was green or the sky was blue. He just knew….

“Excuse me miss, are you waiting on a train ? There isn’t another one before tomorrow…”

 

* * *

She hadn’t expected anyone to be there. The place was so small and quiet, she had never realized how much she had needed the calm before staying there for the last hour, alone with her book and the slow sound of the light rain falling on the glass ceiling of the station.  
His voice made her jump slightly, all taken as she had been by the story within the page of her novel, she hadn’t heard him coming closer.  
He was wearing the uniform of the Train Tracks, a green tunic, with golden boutons. A nice green cap over dirty blond hair and big blue eyes who were looking at her with a bit of worry.

“Yes, I know, I missed my last one and can’t go home because of the holiday. I was hoping of staying here for the night, is that a problem ? I can leave…” Now that he was closer, she could read his name embroidered in gold lettering.“...Link?”

The name was strangely familiar on her lips. And after all, it was. She study history after all, and if one name came back as often as her own, it was this one. It was quite a strange name to wear nowadays, less and less people named their sons after the heroes of old. Too much to bear, too dangerous, if the calamity was to come back, and their son was the one to go ? She could understand the predicament. After all, she herself was the most likely Zelda to be called upon if anything like that were to happen.

“Oh, no, don’t worry miss, you can stay.”

His voice was soft, almost inaudible. She had read that a lot of the heroes had been shy, silent, some says that a few were completely mute. She wondered if all the Link in the country were like the first one, if the name was implicitly making them take certain character.  
A name is a heavy burden to carry, one that most parent didn't really realize. 

She looked at him and everything inside her was yelling that she knew him, but no word would come out of her mouth, his eyes were full of recognition and the fear was restraining her heart.  
The silence stretched for what seemed like years, when finally her throat allowed for the sound of her hope and fear to come out.

“Do I know you ?”

 

* * *

Could she know him? Yes she could, as true as he knew her without having a clue on how he did. He wanted to touch her, to feel the soft skin of her hand like all the other time he had met her. Sometime with a glove, sometime with fur. He knew her in a way he couldn’t understand. 

His voice was silent in the back of his throat, memories of dreams too real, and realities that couldn't have been anything else but dreams. In this place where everything could happen, he had met her, and somehow, something in him told him it was impossible.

But here she was, Zelda, his princess, his everything in so many lives. It was unlikely, said the voice inside his head, that they somehow manage to meet for once without the hovering of an horrible future. But maybe it had happen, maybe this time they could just be themselves without the fear of imminent death and unshakable duty…

Maybe it was just a flicker of his imagination, maybe it was just him who felt the overwhelming need to wrap her in an embrace and never let her go.  
He wanted to say something, anything, try to make her feel what he felt…

“I think you do.”

 

* * *

 

They looked at each other for what felt entire lifetimes. All the one they could  never be together, and some of the one where they were.  
They say that some kind of love transcend life time and maybe theirs is one of them. 

One of Zelda favorite story was the one of the creation of this land. Strangely enough, it arrived almost unscathed to them when so many others were just like tree leaves, scattered to the wind, never to be heard again.  
It was said that it was the will of the goddess that her soul be reborn in a human girl, and her hero soul to follow hers until the end of time.  
And maybe it was what that was. She for sure wasn't feeling really goddess like right now, but the rythme of her heart was telling her that it was him. 

Some things are just too hard to ignore, and the attraction she felt for this boy, no older than her, was unprecedented. Before that, she realized, she had been mostly going through her life like a lifeless puppet. Or maybe the goddess had just made everything happening to make their encounter possible. 

Her mind was filled with so many memories that weren’t her own, it was almost hard to keep up. All the faces of the same man, so different were suddenly juxtaposing on the face of the one in front of her. That’s how she realized.

“Do you...want to have a coffee ? I think we both need a hot drink…”

The eyes and the voice, they had always been the same.

 

* * *

 

They ended up in the all night coffee shop next to the station. The place was about as empty as it could be, a few patrons here and there and a waitress who would have prefer another shift.  
The music was soft, the booth comfortable. Their hands were joined in the middle of the table and their hot coco discarded on the far side of the table for the last ten minutes. If you looked carefully, you could see the soft curl of three triangles softly shining on the back of their hands, another proof of what was happening, but too taken they were with each others presence, neither of them seemed to acknowledge their presence.

They had talk about their lives, how for all this time it has felt like something was missing. For the first time Link told someone about his dreams, and Zelda about her own. They spoke endlessly about their families their works, the school. How freeing conducting a train was, and how much a single jar could teach you about your own civilisation.

It felt like no time at all had pass when Zelda realized the first ray of light had started to appear by the large window of the shop. The clock was announcing 6 o’clock, and it was almost time for her to catch her train.  
They had taken the time to exchange slate number, and as Zelda was dragging him to watch the sunrise on the tracks, the incomprehensible need to tell him she loves him was overwhelming. 

How could she just say that to someone she barely knew, if her mother were here she would probably scold her like the teenager she acted like. But when her eyes fell once again into his, it was like the whole world was lit on fire. 

She didn’t know him, yet, but her soul did. And if you can’t trust the very soul of the goddess to find true love, then who could you trust ? 

 

* * *

 

She was surrounded by light and Link had never seen anything as beautiful as her right now.  
The whole evening was surrealist, but even him couldn’t have invented a plot like that for a dream he hasn’t been asleep to have.  
For all time, the mere concept of Soulmate has seemed somewhat preposterous to him. Not something someone like him could ever hope to have. Even with the dreams. So many of them finished with despair and sadness that he never thought that he would meet her, and live to tell the tale, even less enjoy her mere presence, here, in his favorite place of the world, with her in his arms.

But here she was, and together they were.

Well, she had to leave soon enough, but they knew the real them now, and texting was a thing they could do. Meet up somewhere else and get to know the them from this lifetime, after getting to know all the them from before. They could go on dates, learn to love each other, and spend the rest of their life, knowing that they would never be truly ever appart for long.

Maybe the next one won’t be as nice and peaceful as this one was about to be, but he knew they would be together.

Finally the train arrived, he listened to the sound of the wheels, grinding against the tracks, smelled the smoke of the chimney concealing them from the crowd starting to mass around them. Even now, they felt alone, just the two of them.  
Neither of them could say which one went for it first, but when their lips met, if was like a hello and a goodbye. The happiness of the start, followed by the bittersweetness of the separation. 

It was a promise of more to come.

The ring of the train called them back to reality and Link dutifully brought them to her wagon, helping her with her luggage before dropping a last short kiss on her lips, followed by one on her hands.

“Your highness, I’ll text you when I arrived in Castle Town on the weekend.”

She could feel the blush on her cheeks, she curtsied.

“I’ll be waiting” she paused and winked at him, “Even if I sure hope you will text me sooner.” 

He smiled at her and she swear it could have eclipsed the sun. 

He watched as the train left the station, too slowly and too quick at the same time. Once it had disappeared, his gaze got lost in the forest surrounding the area. The leaves, as green as her eyes, and red like the blush the hard wind had left on her cheeks.

Yes, Akkala University Station was definitely his favorite assignation.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again for reading this !


End file.
